noun of place

Calque of Arabic اِسْم مَكَان‎ (ism makān)

noun of place (plural nouns of place)

1. In Arabic and other Semitic languages, a noun formed from a root and expressing the sense of "place of X".

The Arabic noun of place is most often formed from the root of a verb and means “the place for doing x”, where x is the meaning of the verb. It is typically formed by placing the three consonants of a root in the pattern مَفْعَل (mafʕal): for instance, the tool noun from the root ك ت ب‎ (k-t-b) is مَكْتَب‎ (maktab, “desk”). In the case of مَكْتَب‎ (maktab), the basic (Form I) verb from the root is كَتَبَ‎ (kataba, “to write”), so مَكْتَب‎ (maktab) literally means “place for writing”.

Other languages have similar formations, but without the same name, e.g. the -ārium ending in Latin or the -ιον (-ion) and -εῖον (-eîon) in Ancient Greek.